The present invention relates to a thermally printable paper article with an elastomeric underlayer. The article of the present invention provides improved printing performance by virtue of the underlayer.
In direct thermal printing, a thermal printhead comes in direct contact with paper to heat the paper and produce an image. When the paper does not contact the printhead completely, the heat conveyed to the paper tends to diffuse, resulting in unfavorably low energy efficiency. Conventionally, thermal papers are produced with high smoothness to achieve better contact between the printer and the paper; nevertheless, the match is imperfect and, consequently, defects are manifested in the image in the form of missing dots. These missing dots, which are voids found in, for example, bars of a barcode or spots found in spaces of the code that are read as irregularities in the reflectance profile, result in poor barcode readability.
It would therefore be an advantage in the art of thermal printing to find a way to improve print performance by improving contact between the printhead and the paper.